Spirit Level User Calibration

[Alex]

Hi,

I was wondering how anyone has got on with setting their own User calibration of the Back's spirit level?
Last week I spent a good deal of time getting an accurate calibration, but upon using afterwards on a shoot I rang in to difficulties:
From following the guide I 1st calibrated the back in a horizontal Landscape orientation but then when changing it to portrait saw the level out by ~90deg. This had me believing that a further calibration was required - fair enough - so calibrated it whilst in portrait.  Job done

However when out on a shoot and the camera set up in landscape, the spirit level showed as being completely wrong as per if I would only achieve level if the camera were set within a portrait orientation. Oh my!

So I went back and calibrated it in a landscape orientation and it works brilliantly - much better than the factory setting - if I'm taking pictures in that orientation...

I can't see this as being right that this user calibration works only in one orientation - is this a bug in my camera or a bug in the firmware generally - I can't imagine Hassleblad expects all of their users to have one camera for portrait and one for landscape orientations??

Alex

[DJPixelMan]

Don't worry. If you buy yourself an H6, Hasselblad have strangely omitted the spirit level. My advice would be to just go back to one of those cheap plastic spirit levels that attach to the flash hotshoe and get used to the "old" method again.

[Alex]

..just go back to one of those cheap plastic spirit levels that attach to the flash hotshoe and get used to the "old" method again.

Interestingly enough the resulting positions of the various assorted bubbles on the cam/head/tripod are a good deal 'out' after correctly calibrating - don't think the sensor is mounted 100% bang-on level in the camera/back (which isn't really a problem if I can calibrate the internal spirit level) - btw it is REALLY sensitive and when correct very useful!

Alex

[Hassilistic]

Don't worry. If you buy yourself an H6, Hasselblad have strangely omitted the spirit level. My advice would be to just go back to one of those cheap plastic spirit levels that attach to the flash hotshoe and get used to the "old" method again.

Noooooooo! Why!
Are you sure it no longer available on H6D....

[DJPixelMan]

It has been added back in the latest H6 update.

[Alex]

It has been added back in the latest H6 update.

Hey Nick - could you request on our behalf that the H4D (and H5D??), models could have a firmware update to fix this oversight?

Thanks,

Alex